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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124465">The Lovemaking of Elephants</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbritomartx/pseuds/xbritomartx'>xbritomartx</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Parahumans Series - Wildbow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cauldron, Diplomacy, F/F, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:22:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,539</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124465</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbritomartx/pseuds/xbritomartx</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Monopoly is a basic bitch way to end friendships.</p><p>Diplomacy? Now that's what the elect use.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeanne Wynn | Citrine/Kurt Wynn | Number Man | Harbinger, Rebecca Costa-Brown | Alexandria/Fortuna | Contessa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>play stupid games win stupid prizes</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Lovemaking of Elephants</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A storm raged all around him. </p><p>It was a metaphorical storm, though Kurt suspected that if the argument dragged on long enough David would manifest a literal one. Even Fortuna, the only other person not embroiled in the shouting and gesticulating and tossed papers, was dashing about with her cell phone and selfie stick trying to capture every moment of the fuss. </p><p>So Kurt was alone in his indifference; Jeanne always started out pretending she found game nights tedious and childish, but she always ended up more emotionally invested in the outcome than anyone else.</p><p>A laser bolt shattered the glass office door. Everyone except Fortuna turned to stare at Keith, who looked a little embarrassed. "I don't understand why we can't just go off of favorite colors," he said. "You always make me be blue, but I like red better."</p><p>"Unfeasible," Jeanne said. "At least two people at this table do not have favorite colors. A third one does not know what color is."</p><p>Rebecca fired a rubber band at Jeanne in retaliation for the insult to Fortuna; Kurt knocked the missile off course with a quick flick of a paperclip. Both band and clip struck David in the face, which seemed to satisfy everyone.</p><p>"I agree I don't have a favorite color," he said, as though the little battle had not happened. He considered the breadth of his experience with visual data and concluded he did not feel much of anything, until he met Jeanne's eyes. "But I have a preference for dark green."</p><p>Jeanne smiled at him and he smiled at her and they stopped smiling long enough to share a kiss. That was hard, because kissing made them smile more.</p><p>"And I like white well enough," Doctor Mother said, eyeing a Russian fleet. "But I think we should draw countries from a hat. Rebecca?"</p><p>Rebecca removed Fortuna's hat and gave it to the Doctor, who filled it with tokens representing each of the seven great European powers at the turn of the twentieth century. </p><p>Kurt drew a green tile, but it was a sickly sea green, not a vibrant Jeanne green. He looked at the board. France. </p><p>Then he <em> looked </em> at the board.</p><p>He had a 10.3% chance of victory. That dropped to 3.2% if England weren't eliminated and 5.6% chance if Germany weren't eliminated. Conversely, a strong Austria raised his overall chances of winning to 13.6%, and a strong Austria required the elimination of Turkey and Russia.</p><p>He looked up from the board. Jeanne was positioning her armies in Vienna and Budapest.</p><p>Satisfactory.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>"Why," Jeanne said, "did you not write your orders down? It's World War One! Russia can't just not participate, it's against the rules!"</p><p>"It is irregular," Doctor Mother allowed.</p><p>"Nobody handed me the dice," Fortuna said, not looking up from the notepad she was scribbling furiously on.</p><p>"You're supposed to <em> write</em>. Are you illiterate?"</p><p>Fortuna blinked once, slowly.</p><p>Jeanne sighed, then summoned up energy for an attack on David. "And why did <em> you </em>attack me?"</p><p>"Why did you attack me," David said with an eardrum-scratching falsetto that was so offensive Kurt assumed it was power-generated. </p><p>"It's a reasonable question," he said patiently. "I took the time to explain the math in the last round. If France and Germany attack England and Russia, and Austria and Italy attack Russia and Turkey, then the rest of us have room to maneuver later on."</p><p>"That'd drag the game out," David said, still in the artificial voice. Kurt suspected their ears would begin to bleed if he didn't let go of that power. "I have better things to do with my time."</p><p>"Such as fighting worthy opponents?" Jeanne said acidly, and he retreated into a sulk.</p><p>Kurt smiled. She could cow one of the most powerful men who had ever lived, a man who could hit anything but a gym, and she was his wife.</p><p>"Why are you moving to attack <em> me</em>?" Rebecca asked Legend. "You know that he'll attack you as soon as you eliminate me. He has already admitted that he'll have to betray you—"</p><p>"Yeah, well, <em> he </em> didn't spend twenty-four years lying to me about all the crimes against humanity he was doing in his spare time." He sat back in his chair, then decided he had been too subtle and leaned forward again. "<em>That's </em> a betrayal. You betrayed me. Not him. You."</p><p>Rebecca was unsympathetic. "If I can get over being dead, you can get over being spared some soul-crushing knowledge."</p><p>"Just how—" Jeanne began, but Legend cut her off. </p><p>"And why am I playing Germany? Why did you make the gay guy be in charge of the proto-Nazis?"</p><p>Kurt shot a glance around the table to get a sense of what kind of intervention would be necessary. Jeanne and David were glaring at each other. Doctor Mother was studying the map, doubtlessly deciding what she would do with her three new units come the spring of 1901. Fortuna was still scribbling furiously on her orders sheet, which she'd refused to show to anyone.</p><p>"What," Rebecca said, her voice dangerously Californian, "do you mean '<em>the </em>gay guy'? I know you think that, like, Varaha himself put you into this world to single-handedly solve homophobia, but there are only two heterosexual people here."</p><p><em> Three</em>, Kurt thought, but Rebecca was likely trying to bait one of them into pointing that out so she could say that David wasn't people. He didn't. Instead, he reached across the not-people to hold Jeanne's hand. She didn't show it, but he knew she was upset; unless Fortuna both started playing correctly and attacked Doctor Mother, Jeanne would lose. </p><p>"That's not what I meant, I'm just saying I wanted to play red! That's all I ever wanted. It was a joke!" Then, assembling all of his vertebrae, he struck back. "But between the two of us, <em> I </em> testified before Congress to get them to pass a law legalizing gay marriage."</p><p>Rebecca blew a raspberry. She had an extremely powerful diaphragm and a formidable lung capacity, so it lasted a long time. "<em>Fortuna </em> did the legwork there. <em> Fortuna </em> blackmailed the senators, bribed the representatives, and threatened the president. She did that as an anniversary gift to <em> me</em>. Play the damn Germans, Keith."</p><p>
  <br/>
  
</p><p>"Pens down," Keith said. </p><p>Fortuna did not put her pen down.</p><p>"Hey!" he said. "Pens. Down."</p><p>"She's wondering who Pen is and why it matters that he's down and what is down," Jeanne offered.</p><p>"Real generals give orders face to face," Fortuna said, still staring at her work. "I'm invading you. And taking...uh...Rumania."</p><p>"I thought you might," Doctor Mother said. "Which is why I let you have it. You owe me a favor."</p><p>"The favor," Fortuna said, "is that you are alive."</p><p>For a moment, the only sound in the room was her pen moving back and forth across her paper. </p><p>Fortuna typically didn't acknowledge that she could (apparently) raise the dead, and nobody was sure what to do when she did reference it.</p><p>Nobody, of course, except Doctor Mother. "Hmm," she said. "In that case, I consider us even. I also invaded Sevastopol with my fleet." </p><p>Orders were read and everyone except for Kurt groaned at least once. He'd seen every move coming, and knew that this game would last another seven "years" if things continued as they were. Fortuna and Rebecca were now ganging up on Keith, so he could ignore his north-western front for a little while. He would join Jeanne in attacking David, but he couldn't save her and Doctor Mother was far enough removed from the fray that she was going to win.</p><p>"When are we going to roll dice," Fortuna said.</p><p>"When are you going to follow the <em> rules</em>," Legend retorted, and he slapped her notepad out of her hand. It fell to the board, scattering the armies and fleets that were supposed to be in the process of determining the fate of Europe and revealing what Fortuna had been doing for the past forty-five minutes.  </p><p>Keith turned bright red—his favorite color, Kurt noted with dispassion. </p><p>Fortuna had not, as Jeanne had predicted, been writing at all. He actually wasn't sure if Jeanne was wrong in assuming she <em> couldn't </em> write; it was possible, though not something that he considered relevant.</p><p>But she could undeniably draw, and she'd drawn herself and Rebecca in a configuration that could only be made possible by flight. (Or, Kurt knew, the ability to cancel gravity. Judging by the way her grip on his hand tightened, Jeanne was drawing a similar conclusion.)</p><p>David made an exasperated noise, but Kurt could track his eye movement and see that he was as interested as Rebecca. </p><p>Doctor Mother delicately flipped the picture face-down. "We're eating into our negotiation time," she said, valiantly trying to restore order.</p><p>But Rebecca was visibly disordered. "I don't remember doing that," she said, speaking slowly to make her voice sound more under control. She flew around the table and grabbed Fortuna by the wrist. "Perhaps you could refresh my memory."</p><p>"Hey!" Legend said. "We're supposed to be playing! Get back here!"</p><p>Rebecca shrugged. "There will always be an England," she said, and dragged Fortuna out of the room.</p><p>
  
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